The Scent of Shoulders and Secrets
by aprilhope
Summary: Sequel to Touched From Across The Room, and 4th in my Five Senses of DG series. Ginny corners Draco in his bath to make him realize they haven't broken up. And, despite his lack of clothing, they actually manage to talk.


A/N: I don't remember anything about Ginny being made a Prefect, so I just went with she's not one for this. Oh, and though part 4 isn't much of a humor story, there is a nod to a Dane Cook joke in there somewhere, lol.

_**The Scent of Shoulders and Secrets  
**__by AHS  
_

Well, that was it. It was over. He should have seen it coming. In fact, he _had_ seen it coming, before they even got together, which was why their relationship's three-week run well surpassed his predictions for them. How could Draco possibly have thought he and Ginny Weasley would work as a couple?

The strange thing was, they had... worked, that is. They had dealt with the smartarse comments from students they barely knew, as well as alienation from those they considered friends. Draco could have strangled that idiot Ron when he dared stop talking to Ginny that first week, and had been on his way to tell him he better damn well stop making his sister cry, when the Mud-... when Granger stopped him to say a fight between the two of them would just make things worse for Ginny. For that reason, he relented. She spoke to Ron instead, and by the end of that day, the Weasley siblings were at least back to yelling at each other.

Most of Draco's friends were actually afraid of him, so they didn't say too much, although he did have to deal with harping from his Quidditch teammates, who went so far as to claim dating a player from an opposing House team was against rules. But when he threatened to quit and take all the team's Malfoy-family-funded brooms with him, they shut up quickly. Through those tests, Draco and Ginny stood united, comforting, and never blaming, each other.

Then came the test of a Hogsmeade weekend, which you wouldn't actually think would be a test. Ginny had seemed excited about it, and that made him excited. He'd always found Hogsmeade trips a pleasant enough way to spend a Saturday... running around with Crabbe and Goyle, intimidating the younger students or messing with Potter. A couple of times in years past he had even gone to Madam Pudifoot's tea shop with Pansy, just because she'd been convinced it was THE place to be seen. The lacy decor made them both sick, and he didn't really want to go back there, but he figured Ginny did. Which is why, when the day came, he'd taken her hand and started to lead her up the pink and red flowered path, albeit with a headed-to-the-gallows look on his face. She'd dug in her heels and regarded him strangely.

_"What are you doing?"_

_"I, uh... thought you might like to go in... there," he gestured, only slightly distastefully, "and have some tea... little chocolate cake or something."_

_"That's sweet, but I'm not really hungry. And I don't really get what's so great about that place."_

_"Right... you've been there before."_

_There was a snarky, almost insulting tone to his voice Ginny did not care for. "So have you," she replied coldly._

_"Yeah, with Pansy," he shrugged off. "You know how that worked. Any romantic angle there ever was to our relationship was always extremely casual."_

_"So it doesn't count? Well, I've been to Madam Pudifoot's with two previous boyfriends, and it's really not as intriguing as it used to be!"_

_Her voice rose a bit on "two previous boyfriends" and drew curious stares from passersby. Draco did not like being embarrassed. "Never mind, then! I tell you what... I'll leave. You should stay. Maybe Michael Corner or Dean Thomas will come along and you can enjoy yourself like you used to!"_

With that, Draco had stormed off and spent the rest of the day pretending to shop in Burgin & Burkes, the shop known for dark magic items, because he knew Ginny wouldn't go in there.

And now it was evening hours and he was holed up inside the Prefects' bathroom, soaking his sorrows in a bath. He went from replaying their fight in his mind, unable to find any mistake he had made, to being reminded of how good she always smelled by the perfumed air. He leaned his head back and closed his eyes, muttering in frustration. "Bollocks."

The first thing to draw his attention from his moping and cursing was the scent wafting through the air around him becoming stronger and sweeter... also different, and familiar. He completely missed the sounds of someone sneaking in and pumping a lot more of the bubble bath from the golden taps into the tub. He'd just sat forward and opened his eyes, seeing bubbles now cover the entire surface of the water. "What...?"

And then he felt her. Her hands on his shoulders. And her breath on his ear.

"I thought you might appreciate a layer of modesty bubbles... although I would have been happy without them."

"Ginny! What the blazes are you-? You're not supposed to be here!" Draco at first twisted around to face her, then reconsidered in favor of sitting very still and leaving the bubbles undisturbed.

"I'm so sorry to disturb the sanctity of the Prefects' bathroom, but I thought we needed to talk."

"I don't need the breakup speech, thanks, especially while I'm naked. I got the message clear enough this afternoon."

"What are you talking about?" She thwapped him on the back of his head and walked around to the other side of the tub to look at him. "You think that was...? Draco, a fight does not mean a breakup. And that was barely a fight! And I'm getting in here with you, and we're going to talk until you believe me."

Draco watched, fascinated, as Ginny started to pull off her T-shirt and shimmy out of her grey cotton pajama pants. He wasn't sure if he was disappointed or relieved when she was revealed to be wearing a two-piece swimsuit. Red, of course. Ohh, but she looked good. As she jumped into the tub, he got a cloud of bubbles in the eye, which he wiped away with forced indignance.

"Okay. But you stay over there on your side."

"I will keep a safe distance from your naked, soapy gorgeousness. Don't worry."

_She's thinking about my naked...? Gorgeousness?_ She was confusing him greatly, as always. And he still liked it.

"How do you get to be in a swimming costume while I'm starkers? And how did you get in here, anyhow?"

"Woman's prerogative," she answered the first, before regarding the second. "And Hermione's much more of a romantic than she seems."

"Granger?" he spat incredulously. "Granger gave you the password so you could come crash my bath?"

"Mm hmm."

"Why would she do that? She hates me more than most."

"She's my friend. Why did Pansy help us out when she's always considered me dirt beneath her feet?"

Draco sighed, getting the point. "She's my friend."

"Exactly. It was the rule-breaking that bothered Hermione more than the you part, I think... although she does hate you, and can you blame her?"

Not really, and that was just fine. He might not be calling her a you-know-what anymore, for Ginny's sake, but he still couldn't stand that Mu-... Muggle-born know-it-all. Every time she raised her hand in class and launched into another long, boring answer, the sound of her voice just made him want to punch infants.

"But, like I said," Ginny continued, "she's got a soft spot for romance, especially since she and Ron finally got together. And she's seen how happy I've been lately. That's because of you, you Bubblehead."

Draco resisted commenting on the new nickname, which seemed to hold some of the endearment of Ketchup-Breath, with several added layers of insult to his intelligence. "What about this afternoon? You didn't seem too happy to be with me then."

"I was having a wonderful time with you, just walking around, talking," she insisted. "I wasn't expecting to go to Madam Pudifoot's. You threw me with that one. I wasn't hungry for tea or dessert, as you'd bought me a dozen of every chocolate sweet in Honeyduke's, which I'd already mostly eaten. Plus, I thought you would hate that place."

"I do! But... I was foolish enough to believe you might want to go in there with me."

Ginny thought she saw a flash of hurt in his eyes and started to understand. "Walk in proudly, on your arm, to the place young couples go to proclaim their couple status? I thought we did that, much louder and prouder and more original, three weeks ago at that party. Didn't we?"

His eyes avoided her. "Everything happened kind of fast at the party. Maybe you've had time since to rethink your impetuous decision. Maybe it's not as _intriguing as it used to be_."

She might have thought he was talking about himself, wanting to get out, but he was barely even bothering to cover his wounded pride with bravado. And she recognized the words he was quoting back to her, that she'd spoken that afternoon.

"Draco, you intrigue me with how you can strut around believing you're better than everyone else, including me, and still doubt that I would want to stay with you for more than three weeks."

He looked up, mildly stricken, at "including me," and shook his head. "Ginny, I don't think..."

"It's okay," she stopped him. "I enjoy your superiority, most of the time. It's the insecurity that screws us up, especially since I can be pretty insecure myself."

Draco started to disagree. He thought of her as so fiery and so put together. "You don't seem... I mean, you used to be sort of shy, but the last year or two... You certainly never cowered from me, even before that."

"The most insecure person isn't usually the one hiding her face. It's the one who wears the biggest smile... or most pompous smirk on his." Her small smile held a wink which would not be returned. "The most intimidatingly arched eyebrow?" She illustrated her words with an over-the-top eyebrow arch of her own... well, borrowed from him.

"Are you trying to say something?" he asked, less than amused.

Ginny took a deep breath. "Yes. I'm trying to get you to stop putting words in my mouth, or intentions in my words that I never intended, just because you're happy and you don't know how to deal with it."

She made it sound as if he'd never been happy before. "I can deal with anything," he declared, like he was answering a challenge. "I just don't like when my girlfriend starts shouting out to the world at large about her old boyfriends and all the times they took her out, and how her _latest_ boyfriend just isn't the same!"

"Of course you're not the same!" she yelled back. "You're mad! "You are mad, and you are infuriating, and I..." Ginny hit the water with her hands, frustrated and swallowing hard... swallowing a letter "L" she hadn't expected to find in her mouth. "All I meant this afternoon was that Madam Pudifoot's really isn't as intriguing as it was when I was _eleven_... when I'd never been, when I'd never had a boyfriend, and I would overhear the older girls talking about how romantic it was. Over the years, I've been twice... once with Michael, once with Dean. Didn't really care much for it either time. I remember eating something that had too much sugar for even me to stomach it, and a lot of sitting there, bored, not much to say. Staring at all that tacky pink and thinking, _This can't be what it's all about... love, romance... I want something better_. And you know what? I think we're better. Draco, I really do."

He was pretty well gobsmacked. Ginny hadn't broken up with him, and apparently wasn't going to, even though he might have, well... overreacted a bit. She thought they were better than some lame, cliched teenage ritual of their pasts, and she had snuck in here and joined him in his bath to tell him so.

"This is something I never say," Draco said carefully, clearing his throat, "but... I gather I made a mistake today."

She smiled and slid just a few inches along the tub wall closer to him. "Your only mistake was walking away from me. Your jealousy can be sexy as hell sometimes, like when you pulled me away from Harry at the party. But that's because that was you walking towards me, not away. That's the difference. We can survive the stupidest fights ever, as long as we stay together."

"I know it was stupid," he admitted. "I guess that was the point. If we're going to break up anyway, I'd rather it be over some stupid little thing, instead of something big... that would hurt ten times worse."

"Whoa. Why have you decided we're _going_ to break up?"

"Don't be naive, Ginny. We've weathered a few, tiny storms, but the real trouble is still ahead. Have you even mentioned me to your parents or the rest of your family yet?"

"No," she admitted sheepishly. "Thankfully, I don't think Ron has either. I don't want his take on us to be the first they hear." She saw the way he was looking at her. "I'm not ashamed, Draco. I just haven't been able to come up with the right words to make them understand. All they know of you is what little they've seen... and whatever I might have said in the past." Her voice got smaller as she spoke.

"Ginevra," he addressed her, having kind of wanted an occasion to call her by her full first name ever since he'd coaxed it out of her days before. "What did you say about me?"

"Not much," she swore. "Just _'evil Slytherin'_ this, or _'Ferret Face'_ that, you know... now and then over the years as you pissed me off in different ways. Oh, and... of course..."

"You told them about the Bat-Bogey, didn't you?"

"Just my dad. This past summer, he was giving me this worried dad talk about young men trying to take advantage of me, and I had to tell him something to make him believe I can take care of myself. I told him about the hex and he was very proud of me. Then he laughed for forty minutes when I told him it was you."

"Oh, well, that's encouraging," Draco said sarcastically. "I make your father laugh."

"Look, my family loves me, and I think they pretty well trust me. They'll... they'll give you a chance."

"You can't even say that like you believe it. And you can't say you don't care what they think, because I know that's not true. They'll convince you."

"Convince me of what?"

"At best, that I'm just a Death Eater. At worst, that I'm exactly like my father."

Ginny slid yet a little closer to Draco, shivering in water that was enchanted to stay warm, at the pain and anger she heard in his voice. She kept sliding this time until she was close enough to touch him. When she actually did, he startled a bit, but just watched her intensely. He watched her take both of his hands and stretch his arms out between them, exposing the pale, unmarred skin of his forearms. She looked him pointedly in the eyes.

"You're not a Death Eater. I knew that before, and now I can tell everyone I've seen you naked and there's not a Dark Mark hiding anywhere on your body." Though the topic was very serious, she tried in vain to lighten the mood a bit with her last comment.

"I'm not, but I so easily could have been. Still could be! I'm expected, really."

"You are _not_ a Death Eater," Ginny repeated slowly. "And you're not your father, either. But... I didn't know you considered being like him a bad thing."

"Hasn't been my life goal since sometime after my second year. But it's seemed like I don't have to try. He did a bang-up job setting my path and I'm just heading down it."

"Was I on the path your father set for you?"

"Ah, no."

"So was I just some quick stop detour? Or did you make a new path for yourself and not even realize it? One where you don't take your father's place as a Death Eater, and you can touch the blood traitor Weasley daughter as much as you want?"

Draco shook his head in amazement, as he often did, at how she had come to the center of his world. "I made a path to the kitchens for a snack one night and the Weasley daughter hijacked it and me. And, for the first time in my life, I don't know where I'm going. I think I like it."

"Have you told your parents about me?"

"My father's in Azkaban, so no, I've missed the opportunity to see that priceless reaction thus far. My mother, I love, but she prefers to stay... oblivious."

"How do you mean?"

"Drunk."

"Oh... I'm sorry."

"Don't be. She's married to my father. I understand why she drinks."

They sat in silence for a minute. Ginny, honored by these secrets, gave a small kiss on his shoulder. She wanted to ask more about his family issues, but decided to leave it for another time.

"So... being with me... you're not just rebelling?"

"Who would notice?" Draco posed rhetorically, with a too-wide smile. "Are you rebelling?"

"I don't need you for that. I was already rebelling in my family just by being a girl. Or haven't _you_ noticed?"

Ginny stood for a moment in the water, to let him see exactly what her swimsuit covered and didn't, close up.

"Oh, I've noticed," he replied huskily, watching those lucky water droplets and luckier bubbles drip down and cling to her curves. "Come here."

Sitting with sides pressed together, leaning over their shoulders, they kissed. He nibbled at her lips and found her hands tangling in his wet hair. Soon, she seemed to be getting a little too close for his comfort. He wasn't sure if she had forgotten about his state of complete undress or not, but he... _gulp_... certainly hadn't. Still, he managed to keep kissing her as he reached over the tub's edge and pulled down a towel, which he proceeded to dunk under the water and wrap around his waist. Against his mouth, Ginny giggled, enjoying his predicament.

"I don't know why I'm worried about _me_," Draco said. "You are clearly the evil one in this relationship."

"I really am," she agreed, with grinning lips but heated eyes. "Should I stop?"

His fingers played over the tie to Ginny's swim top, itchy, but reluctantly falling away from temptation.

"No, but I will. A towel can only do so much."

He readjusted their makeshift barrier, and they settled into a comfortable position... Draco with an arm around her shoulders, and Ginny with her head resting on one of his, laughing lightly. For the first time, she really took a good look at their surroundings.

"Merlin, this place is fancy! It's enormous, and it's all gold and shiny..."

"It's not bad," he agreed, unenthusiastically.

_He is rich_, she reminded herself. _This is probably no big thing._ "Are the bathrooms in your house just like this?"

"A few, yeah," he answered... making her wonder how the heck many bathrooms the Malfoys had in their house. "But they're all done in different ugly shades of green. This is... a bit tacky, but definitely nicer. Of course, the company helps."

Ginny closed her eyes for a moment, in contentment, but opened them again when she could have sworn he sniffed her. "Draco? What are you doing?"

"I'm trying to figure out what it is you smell like," he responded, sounding vexed. "You smell so good, and it's not the bubbles, which is strange because you should smell like all the bubble baths by now. But you always smell like this, and it just gets to me." She felt him sampling her scent, from her temple down to her neck. "Sweet like warm sugar... mixed with wildflowers..."

"Red Campion. It's in my shampoo."

Draco was unconvinced. He thought of the pretty, dark pink wildflower. "But Red Campion hardly smells like anything." He took a breath of her hair spilled across her shoulders. "It has to just be you. Or else, magic."

She looked up at him coquettishly from beneath long, copper lashes. "To you, what's the difference?"

_Ginny. Magic. Fair point._

It was then he realized that she had been right, in what she'd almost said before. He hadn't ever been happy before now. Not really.

A tad more snogging and towel adjusting, as well as happiness-adjusting, and it seemed their bath had come to its end. Ginny said something about becoming a prune, kissed Draco's ear, and promptly got out of the tub.

"You better not be watching my backside as I walk away," she warned, though she knew he was and was glad about it.

"Wouldn't dream of it," he said, blatantly staring.

"Good, because I want you to know, anytime you still want to go to Madam Pudifoot's, I would be happy to."

"Ehh... nah, that's okay. I think I'd rather we came back here instead."

Ginny feigned shock. "Draconius!"

"Draconius??" Draco made a face. "What is that? That's not my name."

"I don't care. If you get to use 'Ginevra', I get to use 'Draconius'... even if it is made up." Though she had a sneaking suspicion he was fibbing and that it really was his name.

"That seems fair... I suppose," he allowed, getting out of the tub as well, with his sopping wet towel. He reached for his wand to warm them both with a drying spell. "But only occasionally, and _only_ when it's just the two of us. _Not_ in public."

"Hmm, we'll see."

"Ginevra..."

"Draconius."

xxx

A/N: I wanted them to have a really normal and kind of stupid first "fight," so there ya go. And I don't know if I should be proud of myself or feel bad that I managed to have them both in the tub, Draco naked, and not even a T rating, lol. Oh, and Red Campion probably seemed a bit random and pointless, but it will be mentioned again in the fifth... sniff, and final... part.


End file.
